


Once in a While

by tunny



Category: Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do The Time Warp Again (2016), The Rocky Horror Show - O'Brien
Genre: Angst, Frank uses they/them pronouns, Other, T slur, i know trans brad doesn’t work with the canon of the story but fuck it this is how i coped, my frank’s a mix of david bedella and laverne cox, referenced self-harm, trans guy brad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 09:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13714623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunny/pseuds/tunny
Summary: Brad learns. He accepts. And he tries to move on.





	Once in a While

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this like a year and a half ago and i never published it
> 
> i love brad a lot but you know what i love more? seeing him suffer (and using him to cope)

After Brad Majors came across a video feed of his fiancée in bed with Dr. Frank-n-Furter's creation, he ran to the nearest bathroom and collapsed against the sink.  
God damn it. God fucking damn it. He took his glasses off and mashed his face into his hands, resting his elbows on the cold marble of the countertop, trying to find an answer to anything in this godforsaken mansion. He turned on the water and let it run, listening to the hollow sound it made as it sloshed against the pipes on its way down the drain.  
Then he began to study his face in the mirror, from the crop of peach fuzz barely covering his feminine jawline to his heavy-lashed blue eyes that he chose to hide behind thick-framed glasses. He ran his fingers through his thick brown hair, feeling its tangles pull against him. When he was a kid, he used to insist on cutting it as short as he would be allowed to. He almost chuckled at the memory.  
Then, undoing the sash around his robe, he ran his eyes over his lanky, feminine frame.  
His too-wide hips, his undefined torso, his creeping dysphoria beginning to take hold of him. His eyes drifted over his chest scattered with hickeys — his "boy's chest", as Frank so affectionately referred to it.  
Oh god, Frank. Brad shuddered to think of them, moving to sit on the edge of the porcelain bathtub. How had he, of all people, fallen for their ruse? What would they do if they found him in here? Brad felt his face fall at the thought of Frank's laughter, hearty and deep and… mocking.  
And what did they even know of human gender, anyway? Maybe on their planet aliens didn't have gender roles, but here on Earth, he had standards to fulfill. He had to marry a woman, start a family with her, provide what every other man could and more, just for compensation's sake.  
He gave Janet everything he could. He bought the ring the day his reassignment was confirmed, he signed under false names to buy her dream of a cookie-cutter home, and he tried his damnedest to provide her everything a real husband could ever give.  
And what did Janet do? She hooked up with the first man she saw.  
Brad shuddered. A real man. He began to scratch at his chest again; a nervous tick that he had developed long ago, gone awry. He stopped himself just short of breaking skin, leaving large red scratches down his "curves".  
Well, he couldn't exactly blame Janet. Rocky's abs had caught his attention once or twice or a dozen times– No! She only wanted him because he wasn't Brad. She just had to rub it in Brad's stupid face by picking the strongest, sexiest, manliest man. She was doing this to spite him and ruin everything he worked so hard to ensure wouldn't happen.  
And in the Transylvanian bathroom, Brad wept for the first time in ages.

 

Brad later made the choice to take Frank aside.  
"You're not human."  
"Well, Brad, I must say you're very astute–"  
"Can you fix me?"  
Frank blinked. "I beg your pardon?"  
"Can. You. Fix me?"  
"Well now, I don't see anything that needs to be fixed about you. Except perhaps that temper of yours. I do have a serum for that, though."  
Brad stammered in the eyes of his captor, his lover– No, he wouldn't let himself drift away into the memory again.  
"Look, where you come from, you can be whatever you want."  
"Well, I wouldn't go that far–"  
"But here I have to look a certain way to survive. I will die if I don't look like a man to them."  
"Oh."  
"I'm begging you, please, from the bottom of my heart– fix me, or take me away."  
"Well, Brad, I had assumed that it was going to be the latter."  
Now it was Brad's turn to be speechless. "I– wha?"  
"Brad Majors, you and your... Janet are no fit for the human race. I have never seen that more clearly in any of my children."  
"Your children?"  
"Brad, how do you think I knew all these people at this party? Outcasts, loners, and misfits from across the universe have joined me on my journeys. Columbia, Riff Raff, Magenta, they're all... my family."  
Brad stared into Frank's dark eyes, truly recognizing the beauty in them for the first time. "You're a den mother."  
"Yes, of sorts." Frank sighed and rested a hand on their hip, staring off into some middle distance. "You know, Brad, you don't have to change anything about you that you don't want to."  
"Hah. Try telling that to the assholes at the office."  
"The only person you have influence over is you. If they don't want to hear that, they aren't good enough for you." And with a simple nod and the swift click of high heels on tile, Frank was gone, and Brad was strangely reinvigorated.

 

And then there was dinner. And then the floor show. And then his den mother, the only person to ever guarantee his freedom, was dead.  
And Brad choked back tears.  
Janet didn't understand it. She was distraught, too, but she was too caught up in her own memories of lust and loss to read her fiancé in the morning as they stumbled away from the ruins. She finally spoke for the first time when they were back in the car, driving home.  
"I think we should talk about last night–"  
"No."  
Janet cast her eyes out the window of the moving car. "But didn't you–"  
"Janet, I don't want to talk about it."  
"But I just think–"  
"Oh, stop fighting, you two!" a barely conscious Dr. Scott barked from the back.  
And the car fell silent.  
Brad blinked back the start of tears in his eyes. Suddenly, his once-liberating corset felt way too tight. He dug his nails into the fishnets choking his legs, the fishnets he chose to match Frank's, and felt them rip as he kept his eyes on the road.  
Janet took notice. "Brad, honey, stop–"  
"SHUT UP!" Brad screamed, hearing his voice crack in his throat. Hearing the little girl he left behind in his voice.  
No one spoke for the rest of the ride home.  
When they pulled into the driveway after dropping the doctor off at his house, Brad tried not to sprint inside. The eyes of his neighbors bore holes through his skin as he fumbled with his keys at the front door.  
He locked himself in the bathroom. With shaking hands, he turned on the shower and rubbed his makeup off with his hands while he waited for the water to warm up. It felt more real that way, more raw, more… manly.  
Brad refused to turn back to the razor. But he did scratch red marks into the bruises on his chest, longing, hoping for them to go away. And hoping for them to stay, as remembrance of what he could never hope to achieve.  
Though the morning sun was shining through the blinds of the bedroom window, Janet was fast asleep in their bed. Brad carefully walked to the window, shutting the blinds before crawling into bed with her. Unlike his fiancée, though, he couldn’t get to sleep, and instead sat up in bed, staring straight ahead at nothing, letting time wash over him. Letting his thoughts simmer. 

And so Brad reassimilated. He laughed with the men at work about their ball and chain, he agreed with them that trannies were the fucking worst, and he thanked God that they didn't have to sign his paychecks.  
He continued to bind himself, though he wished he didn’t have to. He eventually turned to the razor, and talked to Janet less and less.  
He could never be the man he wanted to be. Only the man he had to be.


End file.
